First Published 1894 Published by BURT FRANKLIN 514 West 113th Street New York 25, N. Y. PRINTED IN U.S.A. PREFACE THOUGH there are many Constitutional Histories of England and Histories of Parliament, there has, it is believed, hitherto been no Constitutional History of the House of Lords. The reader in search of information could only extract it laboriously from disconnected passages in works of great length, or find it shaped as ammunition for the purposes of party warfare in political treatises. The scope of the present work is different from that held in view by such well-known historians as Hallam, May, Gneist, or Bishop Stubbs, or in the polemical essays of Prynne or Freeman. The materials used, though, to some extent, necessarily the same as those upon which they relied, have been largely drawn from other sources, and have been wrought to other ends. Statements of fact are consequently often inconsistent with those made in preceding works on the Constitution, but the original authorities on which they rest have been indicated. It has, therefore, been thought needless to point out the variations, except in some very remarkable instances. One example may, perhaps, suffice to show that the reasons for differing from previous authors of |